BEMIDJI — Beltrami County voters will make a choice on Tuesday, Nov. 7, about how to finance a new jail.
The county received legislative authorization in the most recent session to pursue a five-eighths of a percent sales tax to finance up to $80 million in construction bonds for the proposed 242-bed facility. Over the 30-year life of the bonds, the county would pay another $80 million in interest.
County Administrator Tom Barry succinctly said Tuesday’s vote will not determine if a jail will be built, only how it will be financed.
"We’ve never taken on a project of this size and complexity before."Tom Barry
“It's not a question of as to whether or not we're going to build the jail. That question has been answered. We're building a jail, and the board has spoken on that,” Barry said in an Oct. 26 interview. “The question is, how do you want to fund it? Do you want to fund it out of your property taxes, or do you want to fund it out of sales and use tax?”
The sales tax would equate to about 50 cents on $80 in taxable items purchased, which would exclude items like clothing, food and motor vehicles as well as payments for services. Beltrami County officials estimate without alternative funding, a 21% property tax levy increase would be required to pay off the bonds while maintained at that level for 30 years.
"If the vote goes ‘no’ for the sales tax, then that's going to be an indication to the County Board to make a decision on taking another run at a sales tax when the community has already said ‘no,’” Barry said. “This November is a pretty big election for our community. We’ve never taken on a project of this size and complexity before.”
But not everyone is convinced the significantly increased size and scope of the facility is warranted — including at least one member of the jail steering committee established to provide input into the county’s plan.
"There’s no automatic trigger that gets flipped that says, ‘OK, now the jail is going to be funded with the property tax,’” said John Henningsgaard, jail steering committee member. “My hope is that the County Board and the people of Beltrami County take another look at the project and that the people make their wishes known.”
The project has received a fair share of community interest, with public hearings over a proposed site for the new jail in a residential neighborhood garnering much criticism over the summer.
“I have a huge concern in regards to the policing that happens in this city and this county and how drastically it affects marginalized communities — Black, brown, Indigenous, queer communities — at a much higher rate,” said Beltrami County resident Christian Taylor Johnson during a June public hearing. “And that’s exactly who you’re going to put into this jail when you build it: Black, brown, Indigenous, queer and poor people.”
What led to today
The county’s push for a new jail comes after multiple licensing actions taken by the Minnesota Department of Corrections in reaction to conditions in the facility.
The state department first issued an order in 2019 to Beltrami County to make long-term improvements to its correctional facility. In November 2022, the board voted to go forward with building a new jail.
In January, a reduced capacity order from the state came about after an investigation into a suicide attempt inside the facility. In the order, the county had just two days to submit a capacity reduction plan after the corrections department found multiple violations of minimum staffing levels and attempts to prevent or delay medical transport for emergency care. The state also noted multiple instances in which Beltrami County jail staff failed to conduct timely well-being checks of inmates, including immediately before the suicide attempt.
"The facility’s infrastructure has aged to a point where it's expensive to replace equipment because the equipment doesn't exist anymore, it has to be made from scratch."Jason Riggs
Today, the jail is operating at a 72-inmate capacity, with the ability to flex up to 82 inmates. Two of the three levels in the building are in use. At the time of the interview, Riggs said about 75 Beltrami County inmates were housed in other county facilities.
Beltrami County’s current jail stands near churches, schools and residences near downtown Bemidji. In use since 1989, it was built to house 66 inmates, two of which could be women. At its peak, Beltrami County Sheriff Jason Riggs said the facility could house up to 150 inmates over the years of remodels and rule changes, but the 34-year-old structure is difficult to maintain and staff.
“The facility’s infrastructure has aged to a point where it's expensive to replace equipment because the equipment doesn't exist anymore, it has to be made from scratch,” Riggs said. “But by and large, the majority of it is just the lack of space that we have and the number of staff that is required to monitor and supervise the inmates.”
Riggs explained the staffing requirements and required sightlines established by the Department of Corrections, and how the new single-level facility would allow the county to meet those requirements.
“The current facility has three floors,” Riggs said. “Each floor has to be manned, and then as a result of the post-COVID lack of staffing, the Department of Corrections came in and reduced our bed space again.”
What’s behind the size?
The size of the replacement facility, according to Barry, was based on state requirements as well as projections by Justice Planners, the lead contractor on the feasibility study and construction of the project.
“There were, as I recall, four or five different population projections that were based upon crime statistics,” Barry said. “They also incorporated a future look at whether or not there was a feeling crime would increase over time, whether or not changes in legislation — say, for example, the legalization of marijuana — would drive down the demand for beds.
“So, there were a lot of these contributing factors like the use of electronic monitoring devices, maybe that would drive down the use of beds.”
Riggs said today’s needs would require 190 beds if all Beltrami County inmates were in the county.
“We are going to embark on building a facility that's going to last at a minimum, hopefully 40 to 50 years,” Riggs said. “It's not a hard cry to feel that we would need an additional 40-50 beds in 30 to 40 years' time. And in addition to that, why would we not build at today's prices?”
Barry said the county is racing against the clock of inflation when it comes to building the structure.
“We know that inflation has been doing some pretty crazy things. Interest rates, bond rates, all of these things are the dynamics that we have to consider when we're constructing or designing projects in the public infrastructure realm,” Barry said.
“For a project of this size we're racing about $200,000 to $250,000 of inflation-related costs on this project every month. So every month of delay is costing us that much in anticipated inflationary costs.”
False dichotomy?
"The average length of stay is what’s driving the increase in the number of inmates, because the actual rate of crime in the study done by Justice Planners, the various rates of crime were actually trending down over the 11-year period."John Henningsgaard
Beltrami County resident Henningsgaard, who has an interest in local incarceration and served on the Beltrami County Jail Steering Committee for the last two years, is skeptical of whether the data ultimately supports the conclusions made by the county.
"The ballot question itself presents a false dichotomy,” he said in an interview. “None of us have had a chance — even me, and I've been on the steering committee — so I really haven't had a chance to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the project at hand. My argument is that this ballot offers our only chance to really say that.”
In a recent letter to the editor published in the Bemidji Pioneer and sent to KAXE, Henningsgaard questioned the transparency of the project’s planning, noting a comment by an anonymous judge — "You build it, and we’ll fill it” — was struck from the Detention Center Needs Assessment report.
Henningsgaard also said the same studies used to justify the size of the project show crime rates are on the decline.
“The average length of stay is what’s driving the increase in the number of inmates, because the actual rate of crime in the study done by Justice Planners, the various rates of crime were actually trending down over the 11-year period,” Henningsgaard said.
“We did nothing as a committee, and as far as I know, the commissioners have done little to address that one driving factor — the average length of stay, the fact that it’s growing, the fact that court processing speed has slowed down.”
Barry said decisions made in courts are outside of the purview of county government, and state statute must be followed for the county’s obligation to house those remanded into custody.
“There was an intentional focus on how the project we have is to build a new jail, but there's also been a forced focus on what other things could we potentially improve to improve the jail situation, to reduce the demand for beds,” Barry said. “That’s kind of the push that we’re trying to make in these recidivism reduction programs and these diversionary programs … to reduce the demand for jail beds.”
Beltrami County has a number of specialty diversion courts including domestic violence, controlled substances and driving while intoxicated, and the jail operates a program called Reset that aims to help repeat offenders.
Special use taxes like a local option sales tax cannot be used to fund operations like programming, but Barry said the dollars can be used to build programming space — 5 times more than what is in the current facility.
“We're going to have a smudging room in this (new jail,)” said Barry.” We're going to have counseling and classroom and educational rooms and programming spaces and cultural spaces. We'll have all of that stuff in the new facility, which we don't have now.
“And the goal is to try to improve upon the impressive statistics we already have with regard to our recidivism reduction programs.”
Riggs also noted the differences in space between the current site and the new one.
“The space that we currently have in there is so tiny, when the jail was built, programming was not a high priority or concern,” he said.
Henningsgaard, meanwhile, said ideas, like an investment to help determine the best placement for people having a mental health crisis or in need of substance use disorder treatment, were presented to the jail steering committee but ignored.
“They made a decision that they want to build a new jail ... and I think we’re overbuilding it,” he said. “I think there are problems with incarcerating too many people.”
"It's not a one-time fix. It's a very expensive project,” added Henningsgaard. “We could scale it down; I think it would be worthwhile our time.”
